Original meditations on race, gender, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up, from a distinctive new voice.
Includes 10 black and white illustrations.
Following on the success of Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, and the ongoing prominence of Black Lives Matter movement, there is a renewed interest in poetry and prose that documents the Black experience in America
Eve Ewing has a growing profile as both performer and journalist; she has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic
Ewing has been featured as a commentator on NPR's Weekend Edition and the Diane Rehm show, among many others
"I didn't think it was possible for one book to contain work and worlds that would be loved by eight year olds and eighty year olds, jr high school dropouts and emeritus english professors. I didn't think it was possible for one book to contain the emotional sweat of Chicago, Dorchester and Yazoo City, Mississippi. I didn't think it was possible for one book to make us smell the residue of classroom erasers, empty White Castle bags and wet wondrous balls of Black girl hair clinging to the bottoms of bathtubs. With Electrics Arches, Eve Ewing has written a book I thought was un-write-able. The book is as precise as it is ambitious, pulling equally on shared memories and individual imagination. Every page feels like a beginning and end, an invitation and conclusion, but never in that order. Somehow Eve Ewing created a book that is at once formally spectacular and grounded enough to ask readers the two most important questions in art: will you stop to remember with me and will you help me change the world with that memory. Electric Arches is alive."
–Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division
